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Veteran Filmmaker Jan Weber Continues Her Documentary Travels

It wouldn't be summertime in Iowa if another award winning journalist or filmmaker weren't making it across the Midwest in an effort to unravel America's broken food system.

This time it's Food Democracy Now!'s good friend Jan Weber, an incredibly talented documentary filmmaker who seemed to launch the trend, now popularized by King Corn, Food Inc. and American Meat, 10 years ago when she first traveled to Iowa to document the social and environmental damage done to the state's farm economy by the rise of the factory farm industry.

We were fortunate to run into Jan in the Tall Corn State at the Willis Dream Farm on the night before the annual Niman Ranch Farmer Appreciation Dinner and I took some time the other day to give her a brief tour of our state's copious cornfields.

As always, Food Democracy Now! is inspired by our friend's knowledge of agriculture and her passion for family farmers and the land. Please take a moment to read a quick story about her by the incredible folks at Cooking Up a Story, another inspiring and talented team of filmmakers.

Spanning over a decade of time, documentary filmmaker Jan Weber (As We Sow) continues her ongoing quest to document the plight of our nation’s farmers, and their often heroic efforts in navigating through our present day food system. Recently Weber has taken to the road on a 5000 mile journey—from East New York to West Texas over the summer and fall months visiting farms of all shapes and sizes along the way.

Jan Weber—As We Sow Documentary

The end goal is to bring an hour-long documentary, Farmlandia to viewers. Here’s an excerpt from her website describing this ambitious project:

This new documentary uncovers a food and farm system made up of very different and often opposing views of how farming should be done, where it should be done, and to what end. Farmlandia lies at the intersection of Big Ag and the independent farmer and rancher, revealing the harsh realities of a distressed, dysfunctional—if not broken—food system and the seeds of a not-so-quiet revolution aimed at changing it.